(re) visiting Vientiane and leaving Laos

So I'm back in Thailand and currently sitting in an airport marvelling at how good WIFI is in this region. Shame on you, Sydney. Shame on you.

I was quite sad to leave Pakse and the friends I made there. I felt particularly sorry for the Lao staff who have people coming and going all the time, especially when they stay for a year or more and then leave. But anyway, that was always the plan and even though my passport was held over a weekend by the police I managed to get away only one day after I planned. The reason I didn't leave the day that I intended was that the bus was full. And by full I mean I couldn't buy two tickets. I bought two tickets because the boss in Pakse strongly advised me to do so. The bus is a sleeper bus, and they put two people in each bunk (each bunk is probably just over a metre wide). So unless you're travelling with a friend who you like to snuggle with for 12 hours it's not much fun. Tash, if you're reading this I know that you're wishing you were here for that snuggle trip.

I had a really nice weekend before leaving Pakse and on Sunday after going to a village church and performing an item (a pretty darn good rendition of 'Jesus loves me') , we went to visit an old temple ruin called Wat Phou (pronounced 'what poo'). The name is funny, yes, and stays funny for quite a long time, but the temple was pretty cool. It's in the same style as Angkor Wat, and though much much smaller, there are also many, many less tourists. The road getting there was pretty potholey though and the bike I was on got a flat tire. We got it fixed at a restaurant/guesthouse/wooden-bowl-making/mechanics shop. It cost about $3. Unfortunately I also had my first epic sunburn of the trip. That night we had a very nice dinner on a rooftop of a hotel. It started to rain so they put a big umbrella over us, and one of the waiters had to stand there making sure it didn't move. (It felt too mean to take a photo but boy did I want to!)

leading up to the Wat

stairs... (we saw a guy at the bottom carrying a pram..)

the temple

ohh flat tire

Now after spending a day in Vientiane and re-visiting my favourite faux-french monument, eating some Scandanavian bakery goodness and also hanging out with Graeme Anderson's mummy and daddy, on my way to Chiang Mai.

don't need to go to Paris anymore!

4000 Islands and at least that many rice paddies. Also finishing teaching.

On the weekend I travelled further South in Laos to a place called 4000 Islands. It's a bunch of islands (though probably the '4000' part is a little bit more figurative) on the Mekong - right near the Cambodian border. Because it's the wet season heaps of the islands are submerged. You're supposed to be able to see Irawaddy dolphins sometimes (very rare river dolphins) but the closest we came was ducks. But we did see lots of ducks and some of them were really cute. We also saw lots of water buffalo, monkeys, dogs and cats. And chickens. And some pigs. And about seven billion ants. And lots of rice paddies.

ants loving sweet chilli sauce

monkey.. chained to a tree :-(

Daniel feeding the sad money 

the cat who liked our verandah

We stayed on an island called 'Don Det' which has the reputation of being the 'party island' of the two where most people stay. It's obviously low season because there wasn't a whole lot of partying going on, but it was quite nice, aside from the very muddy roads that have left my feet a permanent orange colour. We didn't really get up to that much except walking a lot, and sitting in a restaurant that we came to love very quickly. Logan, a kiwi who has been in Laos for five months, used his Lao to charm the waitress who took a shine to us and gave us free stuff.

gross feet

'mou mou' the dog who became my best friend at the restaurant

This week was also the exit of the second half of the Kiwi team. It was nice having them around to hang out with, even though they would still occasionally make fun of my accent (I'm really not used to being a minority among New Zealanders!) and I particularly enjoyed the enthusiasm they had for food. We went to a patisserie type place for breakfast one morning and I couldn't get over how excited they were about a croissant.

I also had my last classes this week. Finishing was as it usually is happy and sad. Or as Thakmani would say 'ohhh so good so bad.' I had some really cool students who I had a lot of fun with, but am also looking forward to travelling more. 

guardia and motorbikes

I was sick for almost a week and it turns out that I had guardia! Who'd have thought! But now I've taken the appropriate drugs and it's all good! I was going to say 'parasites suck' but then the pun seemed too obvious, so I won't.

The sad things is that for me have a bug was a week of feeling a bit gross (still being able to work etc just being very tired.) And now two days after getting the medicine I need I'm at about 90% normal health. Lots of people here though I think just live with it chronically. 

ducks eat pineapple, apparently

I did my first bit of sightseeing in Laos yesterday - to the Boliven plateau to see a couple of waterfalls. I went with a group of Kiwis who are visiting the school to run a kid's program. The waterfalls were really beautiful – I’m not often underwhelmed by waterfalls. After seeing Iguazu Falls (on the tri-border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay) I thought I might have ruined all other waterfalls for myself, but they seem to be one thing that never grows old. Lao OHS though is quite amusing at times. There was a staircase going down to the waterfall - that looked like it could get slippery. It led straight into the waterfall just before the top. 

Stairs leading down to the top of the falls..

The view of the falls from the bottom.

A rainbow

expensive eco-tourism

As well as seeing the first lot of falls we went to visit an 'ethnic village' where one of the girls, Thakmani, who works at the school's family lives. They were doing some weaving and selling some really beautiful fabrics. I'm a bit sad that I'm in Laos at the beginning of my trip when I really don't want to buy anything because I don’t want to carry anything. Thakmani's niece was there, who must be about three, and was super cute. The village, which tourists obviously pass through semi frequently, was full of kids wearing little lao tribal outfits standing out the front of their houses. It was interesting but had that staged kind of feeling. One good thing about Laos is the sales people are not nearly as aggressive as how I remember Vietnam and Cambodia.  

Thakmani working on a loom

Lao fabrics

Thakmani's niece who knows how cute she is.

The second set of waterfalls.

Apparently ducks like to eat pineapple. Who knew!?




An update on the pile of mud
To make the mud road able to be walked on again, the guy who owns a hostel across the road has dumped a pile of builders rubble on top of it. While it makes it more walkable when it's dry, consensus is that when it gets wet (and it's coming into the wet season...) it will probably make it more of a bog.

pakse and some piles of mud

I've now been in Pakse for a week and had four nights of teaching. Until today when I spent most of the day in bed feeling sorry for myself after eating something bad, it's been pretty interesting. 

Pakse is a nice town. It's big enough that there are lots of places to eat, but small enough that you can cycle around the whole thing. I found one place that has very good coffee, which is obviously very exciting. I was also very excited to buy some mangos yesterday (it's actually difficult to find them ripe, because Lao people eat them green.. I don't recommend it, it's kind of like eating only the tendrilly bits of a banana).

Ongoing saga of the week: The road the school is on and a whole lot of mud. A big ditch was built along the side of the road (which is unsealed and therefore very muddy in the wet season, which is starting now), by a very big digger machine in an attempt to drain the road. As well as digging a very big hole, the digger also pulled up a large chunk of the water pipe. Hence the hole flooded, and the dirt from the hole is now piled up near the road also filling with water.